The Forgotten
by SourSugarQuills
Summary: "Life goes on. How?" A short little ficlet after Doomsday. A little AU, the Doctor never meets Rose again after they part in the Battle of Canary Wharf. Soon enough everything is forgotten. The only question is if they ever get remembered again.


_AN: So…yeah. I should be updating stuff. Do you know what I do? I write a Ten/Rose Doomsday fic. No Ten-imposter, though there is a man named Dr. John Smith…Anyways._

_Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who, do you really think I would have gotten rid of Rose? _

_**The Forgotten**_

_Gone. Everything's gone._

A rush of air, and brown eyes open. A body is stirred to consciousness, as is the sorrow inside.

_Life goes on. How?_

A big blue box flies through a space vortex, and a man wonders, waiting. His companion is still asleep, unknowing to the thoughts running through his mind.

_Brown eyes open, bringing sorrow with them._

A cup of tea sits in his hands, and he stares into its murky depths. Brown, like her eyes. Would he ever see them again, smiling beautifully? Doubtful.

_A house, a family. All missing just one little thing…_

Soon his partner will be awake, but for a moment, he indulges. He lets himself believe that it's her asleep in her room, thinks it will be her creeping down the steps sneakily, just in case he was still asleep. He sighs, sipping his tea. _**Never again.**_

_A girl lives in London, but it's different…Far too different for one to believe. She lives in memories, hoping, hoping for one day…One day when she'll find someone._

For a moment, he remembers everything. His childhood, the schism…The time war and the one who made him forget.

_A girl works in the government, a little sector that most don't know of . A place called Torchwood. She says it reminds her of a man. A man she once loved…_

His companion walks down the hall, finding him in the control room, per usual. He turns, just to be disappointed once more. "Donna," He greets her, voice impassive. "Where to today?" They bicker, and for a moment, the cold ache in his hearts almost disappears. Almost.

_A girl dreams of a big, bad wolf and a blue box. She's seen the end of the world and met Charles Dickens, in such a dream. Sometimes…Sometimes she wonders what life would be like if it was real, her dreams of a man with in a trench coat and trainers. Her dreams of the saddest, loneliest dark eyes the universe has ever seen._

Once she goes to bed however, once everyone but his TARDIS and him says goodnight…He's free. And in his dreams, she's with him. Laughing, smiling, and _**he'smissedthatsomuch.**_

_The world seems to conspire against her. Whatever she does, wherever she goes, she always feels inadequate. Like she should be doing something else, with someone else…_

There are times, when he sees his fellow traveler, and everything just feels so very, very **wrong.** The TARDIS misses her bad wolf, and those are the times when he feels like everything is tearing him apart from the inside out.

_Time runs past, far too fast for her liking. She hardly dreams anymore. _

He knows remorse far too well, and sometimes…He wishes that maybe one of these times he should stop himself from regenerating. It's the only way he'll see her again, he believes. He never does; of course, he shakes off the thoughts with a trip to Malcena III…Somewhere that doesn't have her memories.

_Time goes by, and somedays she doesn't even remember anything anymore. She's no longer a girl, and she's seen far too much. Much more than normal people. Her eyes are haunted with memories…So many that the good ones are buried underneath a sea of darkness. She doesn't know what to think anymore. _

He always remembers, always has. Occasionally he makes a pact with himself to never forget his pink-and-yellow human, but he knows he can't forever. 900 years is a long time, and he has many more to go through still. But he promises he'll try with all his might.

_One day…One perfectly normal day, she thinks she sees something. Something odd, something magical like from a dream…But she's old now, and won't try to deny it. Sometimes she catches Mickey staring at her, looking like he's biting his tongue to keep from saying something, yet she never asks him what. _

Time and more time goes on. He regenerates, and suddenly all that remains of her are vague memories…

_She gets married to a man named John Smith. She doesn't know why, but she likes that name. It triggers something in the back of her subconscious which only gets stronger when he reveals he's a doctor. A doctor of medicine, though...And she doesn't know why her face wants to fall when he says that. _

There is a room in the third corridor to the right. It's plain, really quite normal except that the word **Rose **is engraved in shimmering, golden calligraphy. To the day, whenever he passes it the dull ache of loneliness thuds in his chest, but he doesn't know why. Just another companion, gone forever.

_A little golden key sits in the bottom of a closet. Completely forgotten, as the owner smiles at her grandchildren playing and coloring. Lonely forever, it sits waiting…waiting for a day that will never, ever come. Just a dull memory of a dream, of a different reality, never to be seen again. _

Life goes on, everything will be forgotten. He knows that, of course he does. He's the king of loneliness, the last of his race, meant to stay alone for as long as he lives.

_ She cannot live forever, and she's an old woman now. She lies in the hospital bed, death upon her doorstep. Her breath wheezes, and she welcomes death greatly. Her eyes flutter, and for a moment, just a moment…She remembers everything. Her dying breath falls from her lungs, a name on her lips. _

_ "Doctor," She breathes, and the light leaves her eyes. Her family doesn't know the true meaning of the word, well, none except for her youngest granddaughter who rummaged through her closet to find a little yellow key. _

It's just a normal day, in his eleventh regeneration. Everything seems fine in the beginning until an angry sob wracks through his chest and a word so long forgotten is brought to his lips.

_**Rose.**_ Suddenly, everything comes back. She took away the pain from the war, and suddenly…He fell. She was young, innocent, naïve…She was kind to a _**Dalek.**_ The girl who opened up the core of the TARDIS and stared inside…His big bad wolf that cared so much…too much. The girl who fell into another dimension. The only one he loved.

_His Rose, all pink and yellow._

Her doctor, the loneliest man alive.


End file.
